A Poem for All Those Who Cannot be at Public Pro-Palestinian Protests but Support Them

This is a poem for those who cannot be at the protests

This is a walking poem,

not a marching poem.

It is a poem for all those

who cannot be there in person

to walk alongside others

to show support for those suffering

in Gaza, and it’s a poem

for all those people

who find it overwhelming

to be in public, especially

in large groups of people

even if they’d like to show

kinship and participate

in a mass public display

of empathy, in a protest

against the military

state, against the arms trade

and the occupation

of Palestinian lands.

It is for those who would

be there if they could,

but are unwell, or can’t get there,

or have others relying

on them to stay close.

This is a walking poem.

This is not a marching poem

because marching can take

on rhythms that are martial,

though such marching

peaceful marching

counters the martial.

So these marches

have their own poems.

Walking together creates

a circuit of collective

energy that illuminates

and draws others to its

aura without burning them.

Light that is atmospheric

and earthed. That resonates.

It is resolved and committed

and sensitised to the pain

of those on whose behalf

the walking together

is being conducted.

This poem is for those

who can’t be there,

and its lines walk together

and as one, even if it’s

to its own step and to the steps

of all those there on the ground.

This poem is for those

who can’t walk

together on the day

but want to have it known

that they care as deeply.

 

 

            John Kinsella

More Beeliar/Coolbellup Bushland Poems

The bush is being torn away as I write. It's a scene of horror. Hundreds of people doing their best to stop it. Three new poems.

Horror

Failure in-situ — what can be written

as butcher birds clarify the rise and fall

and fall and fall? The Coolbellup woodlands

where zamia palms spike your conscience

on the path — those trees would be good

to inhabit, to ward off the bulldozers,

the employees of the contractors,

prepped to counter protests

shallow in their psyches — jobs to do.

Failure in-situ — what can be written

as the police encircle, ring the wagons,

protect the destroyers? Chat with them,

find the flaws, or treat them as alien.

Either way, either way. As organisation

fragments in the empty shadows, in the vast

cavity of drill and scour, the root canal

of hate. Glib as the wattlebird scurrying

into the dusty air, the fun-fair tree falling away.

Failure in-situ — what can be written

as wound widens, as lexical fluctuations

upset even the certainties of horror? New

inflections in the oldest concept, the oldest

truth of all. The horror spreads and on the outer

we wonder at the silence, to circumnavigate

and find the organs of the body stripped out,

this cannibalism which is celebrated as ‘progress.’

The realm of apocalyptic literature grows.

            John Kinsella

Accounts — to the Premier of Western Australia

I hold you accountable for the trauma our thirteen-year-old

is going through as habitat for the birds he loves is destroyed.

I hold you accountable for the emphysema of the biosphere,

that gasp you add to our last gasps, deoxygenated, stranded by the road.

I hold you accountable for the zoo of death, for the ark scuttled

and going down with all hands on board, for survivors shot on the surface.

I hold you accountable for helping boil the planet in its own oil,

for encasing it in bitumen dredged from the pits of hell.

I hold you accountable for making science a convenience store

in which well-fed bullies stuff their baskets without paying.

I hold you accountable for cruelty and torture, for casualties

you don’t acknowledge, for ignoring alternatives to feed your vanity.

I hold you accountable for treating life as a game in which winner

takes all, a psychology of childhood instilled by abusive adults.

            John Kinsella

A Failure of Empathy

In the tragi-comedy of streets,

the Shakespearean momentum

of anniversary, police approach

a child carrying a sign that asks

what’s to become of his future.

In silence, he stands, facing

contractors and police,

and all is in that moment,

the bush falling to the blade,

the police ready to counter

any threat.

            John Kinsella

Bulldozing has begun, but resistance continues

Poems against destruction

More on the Beeliar Protest and Resistance - Environmental Activism and Poetry

Beeliar Protest Verbs

Killing jar, these wetlands

for government gameplay:

ventricle, atrium, white-tailed

black cockatoo. Jarrah resonance.

Imaging reptiles, marsupials. Boodjar.

Fence up to cull otherworldly.

Clean house.

*

Bulldozer. Catch-all.

Taxonomy overload.

Aesthetes shrink before

what’s to come. Non-

art. Tasteless. How many

words did Milton offer

the English language?

How many words

did the English language

steal from the Noongar people?

*

We saw light and blood seep

from the guttered banksia candle:

like premonition, we shrive

in this belief the worshippers

encased in buildings won’t

listen to. But some do,

their houses on the edge

of another way of living,

persisting.

*

James sends us a photo

from the Beeliar bushland —

a killed bandicoot shovelled up

and shown to motorists passing,

motorists who might soon

be taking the piece of highway

about to be inserted where

the bandicoot’s habitat

once lay, where the bandicoot

lived against the odds,

respite from the suburbs.

*

Management plan profiteering to CEO permission

open slather surface tension to glint a growth ring

absorption to freight blind snake unto pobblebonk

to delete quenda and value-add quality of life sink

bores to test the overlay presence of sealant while

rainbow bee-eaters ploy in dugouts to tip into refuse

removed from site as security only does its job in a pay

packet survivalist way forgive and forget and implement

bonfire and hope for camaraderie in this global singularity

this one season of consuming what’s left lest we miss out

lest we’re deprived in comparison deft dressing vanities

while recountings get relegated to books and stories

work overtime to lift the lost to deny the extermination

as it will be forgotten what was before the rapid transit

voting patterns as free as Trump Tower as free as bums

on seats in proliferating stadia to keep gladiators on

project and whose ancestors push against the blades

of the machines — have you ever seen the z-grade

movie Killdozer, dozer which comes to life mind

of its own all hyped up with agency and sugar

in its tank, in its belly, in its brutal table manners,

subtexts colonial unawareness the roadmap of Southern

Cross and sky on the ground and magpies waking to loss

as democracy makes tarmac Ö plain song, progredi, headway.

            John Kinsella

If people want to join a discussion of poetry and activism, we are running a list as described below:

Poets and Writers for the Environment
A forum for discussion of how and where literature segues with environmental issues. A zone of literary activism and advocacy for the environment. For poets, writers, and academics.